264 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



I did not venture to correct Chuar's judg- 

 ment, but simply sought to discover his 

 method of reasoning. As our conversation 

 proceeded he explained to me that the stone 

 could not go far over the canyon, for it was 

 so deep that it would make the stone fall 

 before reaching the opposite bank ; and he 

 explained to me with great care that the 

 hollow or empty space pulled the stone 

 down. He discoursed on this point at 

 length, and illustrated it in many ways: 

 " If you stand on the edge of the cliff you 

 are likely to fall; the hollow pulls you down, 

 so that you are compelled to brace yourself 

 against the force and lean back. Any one 

 can make such an experiment and see that 

 the void pulls him down. If you climb a 

 tree the higher you reach the harder the 

 pull; if you are at the very top of a tall 

 pine you must cling with your might lest 

 the void below pull you off." 



Thus my dusky philosopher interpreted 

 a subjective fear of falling as an objective 

 force; but more, he reified void and imputed 

 to it the force of pull. I afterward found 

 these ideas common among other wise men 

 of the dusky race, and once held a similar 

 conversation with an Indian of the Wintun 

 on Mount Shasta, the sheen of whose snow- 

 clad summit seems almost to merge into the 

 firmament. On these dizzy heights my 

 Wintun friend expounded the same philos- 

 ophy of gravity. 



Now in the language of Chuar's people, 

 a wise man is said to be a traveler, for such 

 is the metaphor by which they express 

 great wisdom, as they suppose that a man 

 must learn by journeying much. So in 

 the moonlight of the last evening's sojourn 

 in the camp on the brink of the canyon, I 

 told Chuar that he was a great traveler, 

 and that I knew of two other great 

 travelers among the white men of the East, 

 one by the name of Hegel and another by 

 the name of Spencer, and that I should 

 ever remember these three wise men, Chuar, 



Hegel and Spencer, who spoke like words 

 of wisdom, for it passed through my mind 

 that all three of these philosophers had 

 reified void and founded a philosophy there- 

 on. 



In the history of philosophy an illusion 

 is discovered concerning matter and each of 

 the constituents or categories of matter, 

 which are number, extension, motion, dura- 

 tion and judgment; and as bodies are related 

 elements of matter, relation itself comes to 

 be the object of illusion. Matter is the 

 substrate of all bodies ; bodies thus have a 

 substrate, and the illusion of matter arises 

 from supposing that matter, which is the 

 substrate, has also its substrate, which is 

 sometimes called essence. Classes are 

 orders of number ; the illusion of number 

 relates to class or kind, and this is also 

 usually called essence. Extensions com- 

 bined have figure and structure, which pro- 

 duce form, and the illusion of extension is 

 an illusion in relation to forms which are 

 derived from extensions, and is called 

 space. Motions through collisions are; 

 forces, and the illusion relating to motion, 

 is also called force. Duration is persist- 

 ence and change, which give rise to time, 

 and the illusion of duration is called time. 

 Judgment is consciousness and inference, 

 which give rise to comprehension of ideas, 

 and the illusion of idea is called ghost. 

 Bodies are related to one another, hence 

 numbers, extensions, motions, durations 

 and judgments are related. Certain of the 

 relations of these things are called cause, 

 and the illusion of relation also is called 

 cause. 



Now it must be clearly understood that 

 the terms substrate, essence, space, force, 

 time, ghost and cause refer sometimes to 

 real things, as when properly used in sci- 

 ence, and sometimes to illusions, when they 

 are improperly used, as they often are in 

 metaphysics ; but usually the word ghost is 

 now used only in reference to an illusion, 



